The noted composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim has died. The New York Times reports:

Stephen Sondheim, one of Broadway history’s songwriting titans, whose music and lyrics raised and reset the artistic standard for the American stage musical, died early Friday at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 91.

His lawyer and friend, F. Richard Pappas, announced the death. He said he did not know the cause but added that Mr. Sondheim had not been known to be ill and that the death was sudden. The day before, Mr. Sondheim had celebrated Thanksgiving with a dinner with friends in Roxbury, Mr. Pappas said.

An intellectually rigorous artist who perpetually sought new creative paths, Mr. Sondheim was the theater’s most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century, if not its most popular.

Variety adds:

Stephen Sondheim, the dominant voice in American musical theater in the second half of the 20th century and the composer with the most Tony Awards, has died. He was 91. The Broadway icon died Friday, November 26th at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 91.

His shows, from the comedic “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” to the ground-breaking “Company” to the operatic “Sweeney Todd” to the experimental “Pacific Overtures,” transformed the Broadway musical stage, influencing and advancing the medium. Sondheim, a protege of Oscar Hammerstein II, slowly moved away from that melodic tradition to incorporate complex and dissonant themes and structures of 20th century classical music into his works.

From West Side Story (lyricist) in 1957, Gypsy (lyricist) in 1959, to Road Show in 2008, Mr. Sondheim’s contributions can hardly be overstated. He was the most important figure in American musical theater of the post-war period.

Economist Scott Sumner has posted a description of a tax on carbon he would support at The Hill:

Assume the adult population of the United States is 250 million. If we (hypothetically) say the government is spending $200 per adult on clean energy subsidies, then the total cost of the program would be $50 billion each year. Let’s also make the assumption that the full $50 billion is financed by the budget deficit, to match the mistaken perception that subsidies are free money.

Now, consider an alternative idea: a carbon tax that instead raises $50 billion each year. By itself, this would reduce the deficit by that amount. Thus, to have an equal fiscal impact to the clean energy subsidies, the government would need to rebate twice as much ($100 billion) back to the public.

Thus, Americans would on average pay an additional $200 in carbon taxes each year — but everyone would receive a fixed carbon tax rebate of $400, regardless of how much carbon tax one pays. For the same $50 billion price tag as the clean energy subsidies, we’d have a carbon tax program that looks more appealing to the public.

How does this reduce carbon emissions? While the rebate is constant, the amount paid in carbon taxes is proportional to one’s energy use. Consumers would have a powerful incentive to move away from fossil fuel usage.

Only a very modest percentage would be paying out more than the $400 they’d be receiving — and those would be mostly affluent Americans. The net direct effect would be to put money in the pockets of the vast majority of Americans. That, plus the potential environmental benefits, should make it politically popular.

That may sound familiar to you—it’s not unlike something I’ve proposed here from time to time. Better in some ways (simpler); worse in others (for reasons my questions should make clear).

For the sake of argument assume that you do, indeed, want to reduce the volume of carbon we’re emitting. I have some questions for Dr. Sumner:

1. Why would this incentivize a reduction in carbon consumption? It wouldn’t provide an incentive for the lowest 90% of income earners because their ability to reduce their carbon consumption is extremely limited. They’ve still got to heat their homes, get to work (generally by driving), and so on. They might be able to reduce a little but not a lot. I don’t see how it would provide an incentive for them to reduce their carbon emissions any more than withholding tax incentivizes them to save. And for the top 10% of income earners the incentive isn’t large enough to matter.
2. If this makes so much sense why hasn’t it been tried? I won’t accept the answer that no one has thought of it.

goes to Jen Kirby at Vox.com. It is a fact that the U. S. is not alone in experiencing inflation. But Ms. Kirby’s piece at Vox.com attempting to explain it is oddly comical. I’ll cite a few examples.

First, she’s fixated on supply chain disruption as the only possible explanation:

Covid-19, which has wreaked havoc on global supply chains, gets a lot of the blame for this. “Underneath it all, the key theme is a Covid disruption,” said Gregory Daco, chief US economist at Oxford Economics. “That’s the key reason why we’re seeing inflationary pressures around the world.”

Although there’s a hat tip to variation by country, she doesn’t develop that idea at all. It’s got to be supply chain disruption.

Then there’s this gem:

It turns out, the global economy can go a little haywire when a once-in-a-generation pandemic rolls around. The virus scrambled supply chains, squeezed off international travel, and shut down businesses and services. Now, even as the world is recovering from these shocks, Covid-19 is still surging and resurging, and combined with other disruptions — like climate-related events — supply chains are still trying to sort themselves out.

Since 1900 there have been pandemics in 1910 (cholera), 1918 (Spanish flu), 1957 (Asian flu), 1968 (Hong Kong flu), 2019 (COVID-19). Some classify HIV/AIDS as a pandemic, too. What do you notice about that list? The time that elapses between them is by and large a lot less than a generation although, in the case of Spanish flu, it was significantly longer. Certainly not a “once in a generation” thing. My claim would be quite a bit different. I think the time between global pandemics is getting shorter.

Then there’s the incessant “appeal to unnamed experts”. That’s a fallacious appeal to authority.

Let me offer a simple, fact-based explanation that explains much more than than Ms. Kirby’s supply chain disruption and, coincidentally, is consistent with Milton Friedman’s famous dictum that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Here’s a list of government budget deficits by country. And here’s a list of inflation rates by country. Comparing those lists you will notice something interesting. Inflation is roughly proportional to the rate of the deficit, i.e. larger deficits mean larger inflation. So, for example, the U. S. ran a 15% deficit and is experiencing 6% inflation, Germany ran a 4% deficit and is experiencing 4$ inflation. and China ran a 6% deficit and is experiencing 1.5% inflation. I think that’s more than a coincidence. No, those are not perfect correlations. What in this world is perfectly correlated?

Yes, inflation is taking place all over the world because governments all over the world have done the same things in response to COVID-19: they spent more than they took in and used the spending to boost consumption.

Here are a few highlights in the ongoing story of the fight against COVID-19.

• Germany is presently experiencing its greatest spike in new cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. It is experiencing a slight increase in the number of deaths due to COVID-19 but nothing like the spike in new cases. Perhaps the spike in cases will lead to a spike in deaths in the future.
• The U. S. is presently experiencing a slight uptick in the number of new cases but no uptick in the number of new deaths. Will our experience follow Germany’s or are Germans paying the price for their earlier success?
• There is quite a bit of anxiety about new variants emerging in a number of places around the world including South Africa and Israel. Only the future will tell if those new variants will prove resistant to present vaccines and/or treatments
• The graph above depicts the donations of COVID-19 vaccines by “rich” countries. YMMV but what I see are a) something of a shortfall between promises and deliveries and b) Europe (in this case France and Germany in particular) are not doing their part. (a) could be explained by lag time. What explains (b)?
• Could someone explain the resistance to what seem like commonsense measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 here in the United States to me? I can completely understand the reluctance to get children inoculated and even understand reluctance on the part of those under 30, I can’t understand reluctance on the part of those over 60. Yes, there are risks. There are risks in everything.
• I’m having even greater difficulty understanding the resistance to wearing masks in enclosed spaces. It seems pretty innocuous to me. Yes, the empirical evidence in non-healthcare settings can be questioned but what evidence we have looks pretty good. Why not?
• I do wonder whether prospective vaccine side effects are being masked somewhat by the much higher participation rates of the old and sick.
• I continue to be dismayed by the lack of epidemiological testing for COVID-19 here and elsewhere. It’s long past due.
• The FDA has not authorized the use of Paxlovid yet.

My personal status is that I’ve been inoculated against COVID-19 three times. I also continue to think we’ve been approaching COVID-19 wrong all along. It’s always going to be with us just as the seasonal flu is.

Update

An explanation that I’ve heard for Germany’s present surge of COVID-19 cases is “vaccine jingoism”, i.e. using the AstraZeneca vaccine rather than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. If true that would be additional evidence supporting my view that we’ll always have COVID-19 with us.

In reaction to the bumper crop of newspaper opinion pieces telling us why Thanksgiving is such a horrible holiday, Matt Taibbi has written well. Here’s the meat of his piece:

How can I eat turkey and stuffing with a smile, when Columbus massacred the Arawaks? When the English forced the Wampanoags off their land and made many convert to Christianity? When Lincoln told Horace Greeley, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it”?

How? Maybe because you’re more than three years old, and don’t need fairy tales to be real in order to enjoy dinner with family and a football game?

We don’t ask Russians how they can sit around the yelochka every New Year and open presents knowing that Ivan the Terrible used to roast prisoners in giant frying pans, or how they can smoke Belomorkanal cigarettes knowing the real White Sea canal is filled with the bones of slave laborers. I think even most MSNBC anchors would agree, that would be stupid. But we do this to ourselves all the time now, and every year it gets worse.

All this is just a come-down from the high of Reagan-era exceptionalism. The drug has worn off and we’re realizing, in the cold light of sobriety, that we suck every bit as much as other nations. So we’re swinging, as all people with hangovers do, to an opposite extreme.

We’ve lost touch with our real story, which is about us, not the centuries-old adventures of toffs in wigs. The Founding Fathers may have been scum, but they didn’t just steal a continent from the indigenous residents, they stole one from a British King, which is, come on, hilarious. These revolutionaries — Kurt Vonnegut called them “Sea Pirates” — then drew up a document sanctifying their own pursuit of obscene wealth, flying flags that were strikingly like “Let’s Go Brandon” in sentiment while reveling in the horror they inspired in aristocrats all over Europe. Then, in a move that secured their heist while providing the manpower they needed for expansion, they started opening their doors to castoffs, screwups, and cultists from other countries.

Almost none of us are related to Pilgrims or Founders. Nearly all of us descended from those subsequent waves of weirdos and refugees who came from all over, some not by choice, and forged the real character of our stolen nation. Many of our ancestors had their hands forced elsewhere, from Jews in the Pale fleeing pogroms to Irish escaping famines to Armenians running from Ottoman genocides. Once they got here, they happily planted Sea Pirate flags on their front doors and set about inventing everything from cat litter to alternating current, while mostly refraining from murdering one another. It was an insane setup, but they made the whole thing work, which is a pretty amazing story even figuring in the horribleness, and really what we’re celebrating every November. You have to reduce the American experience to a few ridiculously grim variables, and remove everything from movies to rock n’ roll to monster dunks, to spend today sulking.

I agree with his basic message: Thanksgiving is awesome. But I think he’s being far too kind to Thanksgiving’s detractors. Those who only know Howard Zinn’s version of history are doomed to misunderstand that history and ourselves. What the American colonists and their descendants created was a country that operated without an aristocracy. Implicitly, when you condemn our history you’re nostalgic for the good old days when the local laird did pretty much what he wanted to do. No thank you.

And, frankly, there’s a lot of misplaced romantic claptrap in those reimaginings of American history. I don’t defend genocide by anybody but the reality is that when Columbus first caught sight of the Americas, there were people living there in distinct nations of their own. Contra Rousseau and his Romantic descendants those nations weren’t living at peace with nature and each other. They practiced slavery, rape, murder, human sacrifice, and environmental despoliation without learning them from Europeans. Some of those nations, far from being pastoral (cf. the Navaho and the Apache) lived by preying on their neighbors. Here’s what’s disappeared since the European settlers arrived: slavery, human sacrifice, and slash and burn agriculture. You cannot attack Columbus, Junipero Serra, or Thanksgiving without defending those abominations.

I think there’s a middle ground between romanticizing the Founding Fathers (and European settlement in general) and romanticizing life in the Americas before them, that middle ground consists in embracing the good and understanding the bad, and it’s in that middle ground that we should strive to place ourselves.

Thanksgiving may well be my favorite holiday of the year, despite all of the work I put into it or maybe because of it. This year’s Thanksgiving celebration was not as lugubrious as last year’s. Last year as you may recall was the first Thanksgiving my wife and I had ever celebrated with only ourselves at the Thanksgiving dinner. This year marked the return of a long-time guest, an old friend who (except for last year) always celebrates Thanksgiving with us. We look forward both to her company and the cranberry bread she brings with her.

Our menu was the same as always: smoked turkey, my take on my wife’s family’s traditional dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, braised brussels sprouts and chestnuts, homemade dinner rolls, my cranberry relish, my wife’s cranberry jello mold (this year served in individual servings), and pumpkin chiffon pie. It was one of our best efforts and certainly visually it was the most appealing. The turkey came out a deep mahogany brown, the pie crust was perfect, the rolls were perfect, the gravy was my best ever. There’s something to this experience stuff.

We followed our traditions. Following Grace, each of us shared with the others what we were thankful for in the past year, starting from the youngest guest and ending with the oldest. Nowadays I’m always the oldest. We serve our mashed potatoes in a bowl that had belonged to my wife’s paternal grandmother and which she had used for mashed potatoes on holidays. I baked our dressing in a casserole made by one of my siblings. Our best dishes, silver, and glassware, the dishes and silver well over a century old (more like 140 years old).

For a number of years I’ve made a practice of serving Beaujolais nouveau with the Thanksgiving meal. I think it holds up well against the robust and varied flavors of the Thanksgiving meal (when I serve a white it’s usually a Gewürtztraminer for the same reasons). The Beaujolais nouveau becomes available just a week or so before Thanksgiving. As Ben Franklin said of beer, I take that as proof that God loves as and wants us to be happy.

The one tradition I didn’t follow was that I didn’t make myself an Old Fashioned at the end of the day and drink it from one of my old pattern glass footed tumblers. Maybe tonight.

I hope that all of my readers had a peaceful and happy holiday, surrounded by their loved ones.

Yesterday I did something I rarely do following the verdict in the trial for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery: I went around to prominent left-leaning, right-leaning, and libertarian blogs and read their comments to get a sense of the opinions expressed there. The reason I rarely do that is that I tend to feel vaguely soiled after doing it. The incivility and intolerance of views that diverge from the prevailing norm is even greater than it was a few years ago.

I identified three different views: those who expressed the view that I did, those who thought that Wisconsin jury came to the right verdict but the Georgia jury came to the wrong verdict, and those who thought the opposite—that the Wisconsin jury in the Rittenhouse trial came to the wrong verdict but the Georgia jury came to the right verdict.

Although all three views were expressed in the comments sections of blogs of all stripes, the Wisconsin-Yes, Georgia-No view was more frequently expressed on right-leaning blogs while the opposite (Wisconsin-No, Georgia-Yes) was more frequently expressed on left-leaning blogs. I honestly don’t see how these conflicting tribes can coexist peaceably.

Can someone explain to me what’s going on in Germany with respect to COVID-19? At their present pace they’ll catch up with our (bad) statistics pretty quickly.

The Associated Press reports that a verdict is in on the trial of three Georgia men for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. One has been found guilty of homicide with malice, the other two of felony homicide.

Good.